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Wednesday, 13 February 2013

Colonel Claude Charlet

Claude Charlet was the colonel of the 54e Régiment de Ligne in the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of d'Erlon's I Corps at Waterloo. He was made acting brigade commander when the existing one, Général de Brigade Quiot replaced the divisional commander, Baron Allix de Vaux. Sources cannot decide whether it was Quiot's division or Donzelot's that was on the extreme left of d'Erlon's corps. According to Adkin and some others, it was Charlet's brigade that made the first assault on La Haye Sainte at around 2pm. In addition to the 54e Ligne, the brigade also contained two battalions of the 55e Ligne.

This command stand comprises two Perry figures, a mounted colonel and a sergeant from the "Line Infantry NCOs" box. As I don't have mounted officers in my French infantry battalions I needed to find other uses for the 3 Perry mounted colonels. I'm trying to convert one into a general de brigade and a second will go on the Bachelu divisional command stand. Colonel Charlet was perfect for the third figure. I don't know whether he appointed another senior officer to take his place as commander of the two battalions of the 54e Ligne, or just left each battalion to its own commanding officer. But I thought the pointing NCO would make a good companion - perhaps Charlet's trying to work out where all four of his battalions are. In order to have Charlet and the NCO looking at each other I had to position Charlet in a way that makes it look as it's he's wondering off, which perhaps looks a little odd. There's no photo of the front of the grenadier sergeant because I see now that it's badly out of focus!

I'm now almost up to date with the things I painted last year, save for all the ACW stuff and cavalry for the First Carlist War and the AWI. I'll try to post about those last 2 at the end of the week.